Real Time Simulation of Renewable Sources by Model-Based Control of DC/DC Converters

This paper presents a DC/DC buck converter circuit
for real-time laboratory simulation of renewable sources. The
DC/DC converter, suitably driven, can accurately describe the
current-voltage characteristic of a Photovoltaic (PV) array and of
a Fuel Cell (FC). In perspective its hardware structure, if the
source modelling is correctly known and implemented, can
reproduce any renewable source with rated data compatible with
those of the DC/DC converter. The I-V laws of the PV and the FC
have been obtained by an appropriate modelling of the
considered renewable sources. Particular care has been given to
the design of the converter control, to ensure the desired stability
and dynamics. It has been verified in numerical simulation and
experimentally that the designed DC/DC buck converter is able
to reproduce the electrical characteristics of the experimental
generator both in steady state and transient conditions, due to
either load or parameters variations. The effectiveness of the
proposed circuit is verified by laboratory experiments, obtained
by implementing the converter control on a low cost DSP board.